A call centre employee reportedly set a colleague on fire after she spurned his offer to marry him and complained to a senior, reports Vijaita Singh.

A call centre employee reportedly set a colleague on fire after she spurned his offer to marry him and complained to a senior.

The incident took place in the wee hours on Friday on a Model Town street in North-west Delhi. The police said that the victim, 22-year-old Mandeep has suffered thirty per cent burn injuries and was recuperating at Maharaja Agrasen Hospital.

The police said the accused, Abhishek Verma, 24, who is still at large. A case of attempt to murder has been registered against Verma at the Model Town police station.

A senior police officer said, “At around 2 am on Friday, the accused stopped his black Alto car near the Queen’s Mary school and asked the victim to get off. He fought with her and then poured petrol on her. He then lit her up. Although he tried to douse the fire and made the PCR call himself, he fled the scene.”

The accused was harassing the victim for the past few days and was coercing her to marry him, said a police officer.

Hemant Aneja, a relative of the victim, said, “Verma was harassing her for the past one and a half months. He wanted to marry her and used to call her up during odd hours. On Thursday, Mandeep even complained about the matter to her senior, who reportedly asked Verma to behave himself or leave the job. This pushed him to think about revenge,” said Hemant Aneja, a relative of the victim.

Verma also used to drop the victim everyday to her house in Shalimar Bagh along with two more colleagues. They had a car pool arrangement.

“On Friday, he did not drop her at her house and instead took close to his house in Model Town. He had brought a bottle of petrol along with him. It was a preplanned attack. He used to harass her often,” added Aneja.

The police said that both the accused and the victim were working at Sai Telecommunications, a UK-based call centre in Saraswati Vihar.

The victim was from Punjab and was residing in a rented accommodation in Shalimar Bagh along with her younger brother.

She had been working with the call centre for the past four years, while Verma had joined just eight months ago.